Consumers increasingly have a variety of communication and entertainment choices. For example, a typical consumer may have a landline and a mobile phone for voice communications and may have a television and a personal computer (PC) to view entertainment programming.
One problem associated with this is that consumers have become reliant on a plurality of communication and entertainment mechanisms and devices, which means when one is not readily available the consumer may experience frustration. To solve this issue, enterprises are converging voice and entertainment technologies, and making them ever present on a plurality of devices. For example, a cell phone can play streaming video and a PC can make voice calls to land lines or mobile phones, etc.
One area that has not been particularly integrated well is voice technology with television (TV) technology. Furthermore, when consumers are enjoying entertainment programming on TV and a desire for voice communications is needed, their viewing experience becomes disrupted and may never be re-established if the consumer has to track down a particular type of voice communication. It may also be that the particular type of voice communication is not available at all and the consumer is away from home entirely.
Thus, it is advantageous to provide techniques for more efficient voice and television integration.